


Draces Cynn

by Massanie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Gore, Bottom Harry, Criminal Masterminds, Dark, Dark Draco, M/M, Minor Character Death, Organized Crime, Violence, Work Up For Adoption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:12:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Massanie/pseuds/Massanie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the loss of his family and overcoming a post-war depression Draco is determined to stage a comeback like there's never been before and help himself to what he always wanted: influence, power, money and Harry. But can he checkmate the Boy Who Lived who just started his career as an Auror?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Draces Cynn

**Author's Note:**

> This was first published in February on fanfiction.net and inspired by the Viewfinder Series.

That the war had begun with the fall of the ministry was more than unfortunate; especially after the war. The institution that should have protected the wizarding community from the horrors of You-Know-Who's reign had been infiltrated too easily, fallen without much resistance and been overtaken within a single day. And because the enemy to which the ministry had bowed so quickly was able to keep most of its employees in his service without any major difficulties - just with an effective and well-measured mixture of blackmail, bribes, group pressure and open surveillance - the seizure of power had happened so smoothly and all-encompassing, it had left everyone in a shocked stupor, unable to act. The very structure of the ministry, which essentially granted single individuals like the minister or the head of departments an alarming amount of power by enabling them to pass laws by themselves, became the wizarding community's downfall for it allowed You-Know-Who to seize absolute control. Legislature, Executive, Judicature - all in the power of individuals who answered to a single, cruel and ruthless man.

Then, after the war it was impossible to cleanse the diseased institution of all the pathogens it suffered from. If the newly appointed minister had fired every employee with ties to the fallen Dark Lord, it would have become incapable of acting.

It was curiously like an autoimmune disease: the system that should have protected and helped had attacked instead and thereby had ravaged the body that hosted it: the wizarding community's trust. In the aftermath people turned to other places for aid: namely those that had the money and influence to protect those loyal to them from a ministry that was still as corrupt, still as incompetent as ever.

It started with the not quite unfounded fear of those with more active roles in the war that the punishments awaiting them might be more than they could shoulder, that each trial would be short, unfair and resulting in the loss of freedom, standing, wealth and much more; that an imprisonment would leave their families without protection, support and in a more materialistic sense without a job and sometimes when reparations were due, even without a home. And consequently they searched out the help of those able to bribe or threaten the Aurors and Wizengamot members and lessen the impact. And if that was not possible, then to at least care and provide for those that a prisoner left behind. In exchange they and their families became indebted to their benefactors.

There were, of course, not many such benefactors, since those with the wealth to back them were most often either unwilling or not influential enough: unwilling, because they were most often purebloods with an attitude to match their bloodline and had no wish to step in for those of a lesser status or - heaven forbid - those of creature blood; and not influential enough because most of those that were rich and willing to bribe or even threaten or kill ministry officials had most often been involved with the 'dark side' in the wizarding war themselves and their reputation wouldn't allow them to effectively manoeuvre around the ministry, besides, most of them were busy enough keeping themselves and their families out of prison.

Draco Malfoy supposed that he was the obvious choice to go to. It was a wide-spread yet unproven supposition that the Malfoys had kept investing in not quite legal undertakings even before the war and so his willingness to stray from the law if it was profitable enough was practically a given; yet although he had been a known Death Eater, Draco had been acquitted of his crimes – and that early enough to be able to assist other accused. His trial had been one of the first and with Harry Potter himself speaking out for him, who could have sentenced him? The Gryffindor was the one paragon of goodness that people still trusted, after all. No, Draco was cleared and free of suspicion.

And there was no one richer than the Malfoys. And it all belonged to him.

Yes, everything. His parents both had died in the final battle in front of their only son's very eyes and it had torn something out of him, something insubstantial Draco couldn't quite place but knew he couldn't get back. Maybe it was nothing more than the last bit of the already battered illusion of a child believing its parents to be strong and invulnerable and perfect, always there to pick up the shambles of the misdeeds of a pampered brat, as Severus had called him.  
It had also taken away his fear of dying. Had even made him desire the experience in some perverse, twisted sense of curiosity. What would it feel like, that shock of being fatally wounded? That never-ending instant of just knowing 'that's it'.

His father had been hit with an expulso. Quick, probably painless and endlessly bloody. Such a mass of innards and shreds of tissue. At least Draco was sure he hadn't felt a thing but he wondered if Lucius' brain had had the chance of registering his death before he had bled out. After all, even bleeding to death from a hole in one's stomach as large as a fucking bludger took some seconds. Enough time surely for the brain to realise the futility of a fight, the hopelessness of a dire situation, the fact that a fatal wound was causing it to shut down for good. Though perhaps the shock would prevent such last thoughts, drowning them in an ocean of nothingness. In any case the question remained: what would that fatal shock feel like?

One had to wonder.

Narcissa had been next to her husband, screaming, splattered with his blood and more solid, organic things. Draco still remembered the expression on her face and the shrill cries of horror exploding out of her, just like her husband's innards had more or less exploded out of him; it had haunted Draco for a long, long time each and every night, and sometimes even under the deceptively warm sun light in the manor's gardens. At least she hadn't screamed for long before a green light had hit her. The sudden silence in Draco's ears had been both horrifying and a relief at the same time, while he had still been running towards the two most important persons in his life as if there was still the chance to do something. She had fallen like a dying swan, so tragically beautiful, graceful even in death and splattered with blood.

Well, and that was that.

After his trial, Draco returned to a gloomy manor full of dark memories only inhabited by House Elves. He had holed himself up in different rooms of his parent's home, falling deeper into morbid musings and dawning insanity until he had called an Elf and began the daunting task of trying to get it to cast an expulso on its master. The thing had been sobbing and wailing, pulling at its ears and Draco was about to just do the deed himself before the impending headache caused by the Elf's weeping would grow into unbearable dimensions (it couldn't be that difficult to do the wand movements rotated by 180°, now, could it?), when a quiet pop and a squeaky, fearful voice interrupted him. "Master Malfoy, there are guests, master Malfoy, sir!"

For a moment, Draco had kept playing with his wand in frustrated resignation, the hawthorn wand that Harry Potter had returned to him, honestly regretting that what should have been the last experiment of his young life would have to be postponed.  
"Who?" he asked, mildly interested.

"Miss Parkinson, master Malfoy."

It really was some strange quirk of fate. As it was, the following meeting between Draco Malfoy and one Pansy Parkinson would rewrite history; well, not literally, since no one would ever learn of it; but still, it would change the following years for the entire wizarding community in Britain. Draco himself would come to rather enjoy that thought, it was so uplifting to know of the impact one had on the world one lived in. But we digress; When his former girlfriend asked the Malfoy heir to help her father evade prison, Draco had amiably agreed under the condition that her family would stay loyal to Draco and Draco alone. After all, it wouldn't do to assist someone for free - he had after all the business acumen of a Malfoy, and it would be a shame not to exploit the chance even if he decided to expulso himself afterwards; maybe he could even get Pansy to do it herself as a repayment, she might find it amusing.

But he hadn't expected the experience to thrill him so much.

Without any difficulties, Draco had been able to locate an upstart in the Auror department and persuaded him with rather gracious means to see things his way. The right way. His new friend had given him access to all the evidence against Mr. Parkinson and told him which unlucky individuals were going to testify against the father of his friend. Draco had worked day and night for not even one week, bribing, threatening and blackmailing certain witnesses (one he had had to make disappear. He'd paid a muggle to do it; crafty little things those muggles, easy to be swayed and so very imaginative in the art of killing; and no one asked twice why a wizard would be shot in a dark alleyway by a muggle robber. Bad things happened all the time, right? It was a funny thing though, since the incident lead to quite some difficulties between the wizard and the muggle governments, which also helped to divert the public's interest to other more interesting topics than the simple trial of a death eater). Draco had even 'persuaded' a few of the Wizengamot members, forged alibis, found ways to refute the evidence ... then, at the age of barely 18, he had stood before the wizarding court and defended one of the Dark Lord's most famous followers. And managed to get him out with nothing more than a slap on his hand: a year of house arrest and two thousand galleons penalty for the poor guy who had been forced into servitude to such a cruel man and tried to defy him at every opportunity.  
Hey, there had been witnesses for that!

When he had returned home from the celebration with the Parkinsons, the tempting call of his hawthorn wand had been much quieter, subdued somehow. Here was something to occupy his mind and take it off of the shadows haunting his sleep. Exciting, thrilling... and if he should grow bored someday, well then, he could still find out what the knowledge felt like, the knowledge of certain and immediate death.

That didn't happen though. Like a wildfire the news of his defence of Mr. Parkinson spread in certain circles and Draco found himself rather busy collecting further debts. Within two months he had established a private network of informants and handy little assistants within the ministry that could replace verita serum for the defendants with harmless water if he needed it, inform him about the evidence and the witnesses that would be called and even when a raid might take place. And with every client he took, his influence and resources and his network spread, because Draco insisted on his client's information network to be integrated in his own.  
Of course he didn't accept all cases he was offered. For one, it would arouse suspicion if a not inconsiderable part of the defendants in the Death Eater trials would suddenly be released without any real punishment. And for another: even the Malfoy vaults were not infinite and Draco knew that one day the means he had to play this game would end. But for now, he was determined to push his luck.

For those he decided not to openly support he at least used his influence to somewhat mitigate the sentence and they were assured that their families would be taken care of and that, once the upheaval Britain's wizarding world found itself in after the war had settled, Draco and his Cynn would do everything in their power to achieve a mitigation of punishment. If, Draco mused, he'd find himself bankrupt until then, he'd have no power to help anyone and thus the deal would be null and void. No problem.  
And since the deal was always struck with Draco and his Cynn, none of the others would be indebted.

His Cynn. Draco always had to smirk inwardly at that word. Like the Wizengamot, it had germanic roots, in some way it was a kind of sarcastic wink to his adversaries of the ministry he guessed. But for Draco and the few Slytherin friends that had joined him in his venture, it was more than that. It was a homage to their traditions, to the past of the magical community in Britain itself and to the age-old values and rites that the Dark Lord should have honoured but hadn't.

Mrs Zabini had given him the idea, if he remembered correctly, barely three months into his new career on the night of the 31st of October to the 1st of November.

Draco had spent that night with some loyal friends (well, most of them were loyal to him for far longer than the last few months and for more reasons than recently acquired debts, anyway) who had joined him in his endeavour instead of returning to Hogwarts to finish their education; namely Pansy, Blaise, Theo and Daphne.

So, in a merry round of spite, sarcasm and alcohol-dampened smartness they had celebrated Samhain together; not the disgraceful Halloween rubbish they would be doing at Hogwarts, at least those who had returned there after the war. No, Samhain should be more than feasting and partying. It was the very first of the Wiccan Sabbaths, the death festival marking the descent of Winter and the date of the Celtic New Year.

Together they had gone to a hill not far from the manor and covered the whole area with warming charms before they had proceeded to prepare a Samhain bonfire that they wanted to lit at midnight, one as large as they could. Instead of the overused and clichéd jack-o'-lanterns made of carved pumpkins, they had lit black candles and charmed them to fly into the air surrounding the fire, meant to invite the spirits of their ancestors and those who had died during the last year, while keeping away hostile ghosts and spirits. The atmosphere was festive and solemn and nostalgic and exuberant all at the same time, varying from one moment to the next and Draco was glad not to be alone that night.  
After everything was prepared, the group of young wizards had taken their seats in high-backed arm chairs at a long wooden table that the house elves had set up earlier. One end was set out for Draco and his guests with various rather fancy dishes and some bottles of the best wine the Malfoy cellars had had to offer. Every other place at the table was occupied with plates of rotting meat and mouldy vegetables, covered by a bubble charm so that none of the living beings present at the table would be bothered by the smell.

When the sun had set and twilight had fallen, Daphne had stood with an amount of grace and solemnity only a true Greengrass heiress could muster. Draco's knowledge of magical rituals was considerable but not as vast as Daphne's and as always he found it to be a pleasure to watch her fluid movements as she opened their Samhain celebration by calling upon the dark magic. The spectacle that she made of herself was soothing and Draco felt the inner tension that hadn't left him since his task of killing the former headmaster had begun to go awry so spectacularly ease away and for the first in a long time he had felt calm and even vaguely peaceful again. The perfect mental preparation for the rising storm of magic around them, that began to prickle in the very air they breathed, causing Draco's skin to crawl with the excitement of feeling something so raw and wild; it danced through the candles hovering above their heads and filled their bodies with invigorating streams.

Of the speech Daphne had held, Draco remembered little. He was not used to Samhain speeches as he and his parents had always held a Dumb (meaning silent) Supper that night. But since he had no family any longer and his friends had therefore decided to crowd his place, and since he really knew that Pansy would never survive an entire meal in silence, he had asked Daphne to lead the Samhain celebration. He vaguely recalled that her words had something to do with transitions and death and life and rebirth and ancestors and memories and dark magic - fairly common themes for Samhain - but he distinctly remembered how Daphne had rounded the table with measured steps, calling out a name for each of the empty chairs she passed and lighting a candle in front of each place at the table.

One of them had been "Tracy Davis" and Draco felt more than heard the barely perceptible tremor in Daphne's voice as she spoke the name of her best friend who had died in front of her eyes during the battle of Hogwarts. But the blonde young woman had smiled as she pressed a kiss to her own fingers and laid them against the back of the chair, the place she had reserved for Tracy; and more than ever Draco understood that this was not a night for grieving, but for remembrance. And when after several other names (not including Vincent Crabbe, the traitor, for which Draco was glad - it would have rather ruined his mood) "Narcissa Malfoy and Lucius Malfoy" had been voiced, it hadn't stirred that mad blackness within his mind.

Instead he had silently enjoyed his friends sharing stories on the deceased they had invited to their table, small anecdotes, sarcastic remarks and Draco found himself listening with a smile as Pansy complained that his mother had been always so prim and proper, forbidding them this, that and the other and only causing them to play their games in secrecy and under much more dangerous conditions than it would have been necessary.  
Later on a few ghosts had actually visited, joining in their story telling and roughly at midnight they had lit the Samhain Needfire and voiced their wishes for the new year. In some bout of drunken lunacy Draco had had the House Elves bring all the brooms of the manor and they had taken bets on who would dare to fly right through the flames. In hindsight Draco thought he probably had only wanted to reenact his near-death experience of another flight through fire, but maybe he just wanted to remember the feeling of Harry Potter's ass pressed against his groin while flames raged everywhere around them and licked at their legs.

That had been hot. Literally.

Well, it didn't really matter, since both, in his opinion, were absolutely, perfectly reasonable excuses for such a stunt. Especially since he had won.

In any case, it was during that night that Draco finally realized that he couldn't keep on chasing death, and it was during that night, that he decided with whom and with what he wanted to spend his future with. He would honour his parents, his ancestors; he would raise the Malfoy name once again out of the pits of shame, he would see them at the very top of their society and he wouldn't rest before that. And that path was a path he wanted to walk with the very people that now celebrated with him.

And once he was at the top, he wanted Harry Potter to be there with him. He was Draco's, even if the boy didn't know it yet.

So when Blaise's mother visited them later that night, mentioning how impressive she found what Draco and his Kith had done, the pale haired Malfoy heir shook his head, his eyes burning intensely. "No, these are not my Kith, there are stronger bonds than oaths between us. I want us to become Kin, related by blood."

For some moments, there was utter, unchallenged silence, then Nott babbled through his wine worsened confusion "You're not proposing what I think you are proposing, are you?"

"Blood covenants?" Mrs Zabini asked with a raised eyebrow.

Draco nodded with a small, devilish smile. "Yes, Ides."  
He knew the black woman would like the title and Draco wasn't disappointed: a moment later the beautiful Mrs Zabini laughed quietly at being called the wise, female advisor of their new little family. And with a flourish she bowed gracefully with only a hint of amusement.  
"My Cyning!"

Pansy was soon following suit, her eyes gleaming with excitement - or inebriation, probably both. "Oooh, why not? Draco's Kin ... Draces Cynn. I'm all for it!"

 

Well, there is nothing more to say to that matter, really, besides that this very moment was the start of the Draces Cynn, sometimes just called _the Cynn_.

* * *

  
But though they were now more closely bound together than ever before through magical ties that couldn't be broken ever again, their little venture still had the small but not irrelevant problem of an unbalanced profit and loss statement.

The lady Fortuna though, was most gracious. She had turned her wheel for good and those that had been on the bottom during the war would stay in the light of her graces yet a while longer.

As it happened, the ministry played right into Draco's hands. For one the regulations concerning potion ingredients were tightened so much that potion masters were hindered in their work. The use of all major ingredients for dangerous potions had to be approved of by a new department in the ministry, which slowed down the production of potions considerably and caused the prices for certain potions to explode.  
At nearly the same time, the wizarding community in Germany had reacted to the war in Britain with another security measure as was their wont whenever an act of violence happened, be it within their own country and jurisdiction or not. But this time they had brought forth an innovation that would actually gain currency in major parts of Europe. A Wira Wespe had invented a certain charm that could be ingrained into a wand and prevent the wielder from using certain spells, mainly the Unforgivables and other potentially deathly charms which included a large variety of offensive magic.  
Apparently the Wizengamot thought that idea to be ingenious and immediately passed a law that stated that every wand needed to be charmed with the Wespenzauber. It might have even been an improvement to the security in Britain, if not for the fact that the common wizard did not trust in the Ministry to protect them any longer.

Draco and his friends reacted without delay. Blaise travelled to Germany immediately after the news of the Wespenzauber were announced and managed to find and sway the daughter and apprentice of Mrs Wespe, Ronja, to join their Cynn. The delicate girl with fiery red hair, sea blue eyes and skin as unhealthily pale as Draco's was a gem truly, as she was able to break her mother's spellwork and intelligent and ruthless enough to recognize the great opportunity that a politically and socially unstable country struggling for some sense of normalcy and order could offer: the establishment of an organisation that could in time become more powerful than even the government itself.  
With her help the service of the Dracen Cynn soon included the substitution of the Wespenzauber with a harmless illusion and the supply of so-called weapons-grade wands that usually only Aurors and licensed private personal protectors were allowed to possess.

At the same time Theo and Daphne worked day and night to put every Malfoy property under the Fidelius charm enabling them to construct secret greenhouses to grow many of the potion ingredients that were now so difficult to come by. Pansy had gone abroad to plan and establish smuggling routes for those ingredients that couldn't be cultivated and Draco kept up his work at establishing a network of information and influence that centred around himself and also establishing several cover-up businesses to explain their significant income. For that he had bought up some of the empty shops in Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade and other wizarding communities and officially rented them out to his debtors along with several housing complexes.

At the time Harry Potter and Ronald Weasely started their Auror training, Draces Cynn was already owning several restaurants, bookshops, one hair salon and a beauty shop (on Pansy's insistence), groceries, and two apothecaries - one in Hogsmeade and one in Diagon Allay. They were officially one of the most important donors to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries and some major departments of the Ministry itself and furthermore owned a not inconsiderable part of the Daily Prophet.

Of course there had been problems, one of the major ones being that damned incorruptible Minister of Magic. Shacklebold had been a variable that was too rigid and too inflexible to make a coexistence possible. Had he remained in office, there was no doubt that he would have managed to find a way to overthrow Draces Cynn.

Well, Draco didn't want to know what their Ides had done with him, he really didn't. After having killed no less than seven husbands, Mrs Zabini certainly knew how to get rid of someone... But he couldn't help but feel a little bit sorry for the man. Draco had respected him.  
He hadn't been the only one who had to disappear though, and Draco knew there would be more. Some of them would die by his hand, some of them by his growing number of Kith - those who were related to him and his Cynn by oath.

Alas! There is no going back... anyway, the Cynn would certainly invite Mr Shacklebold to the next Samhain.

That would be a sight... Draco smirked to himself from where he, Pansy, Blaise, Ronja, Theo and Daphne were currently dining on the terrace of a newly opened restaurant in Diagon Allay, their newest.

And while his brothers and sisters drank and laughed and celebrated, Draco's gaze rushed over the multihued crowd in the street, unerringly finding the still unruly mob of black hair that had just left the Ministry. Deep pools of emerald stared back at him for but a moment, that fierce glare that made him think of a prowling wolf.

His darling Harry would soon start the practical part of his training.

Draco couldn't wait.  


**Author's Note:**

> Phew, I hope you liked it...
> 
> I put Draces Cynn up for adoption because I currently don't have the time to continue it and I think the chapter is open enough to leave an author ample scope; though I'd like to reserve myself the right to someday follow this idea further and see where it leads me. 
> 
> Explanations:  
> Dis - a female ancestral spirit, also a mature female of a tribe who gives advice (OE Ides)  
> Kin - those related to you by blood (OE Cynn)  
> King - the person who holds the collective luck of a tribe, and who acts as intermediary between tribe, land, and gods (OE Cyning)  
> Kith - those related to you by oath or marriage (OE Cyðe)  
> Draces Cynn - The Dragon's Kin


End file.
